FG Empowering Women to Fight Poverty, Malnutrition, Says Minister

Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja

The federal government has said its empowerment initiatives are  targeted at pulling women out of poverty as a means of addressing the problem of malnutrition among families and children in the country.

It said that henceforth funds would be channeled towards such programmes that can have immediate and long term impact on improving the lives of the women and children.

The Minister of Women Affairs, Uju Ohaneye, stated this in Abuja yesterday at the launching of book on guidelines for implementation of empowerment schemes for women and young girls in Nigeria developed by the Civil Society Network (SUN-CSN) in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs and other stakeholders.

CS-SUNN is a coalition of civil society organisations working in the nutrition space across different countries in the world including Nigeria.

While stating the government’s position, the minister said: “ For us to solve the problem of malnutrition, we have to look inwards, we have to start cutting down on expenditures on unnecessary things and focus on sustainable programmes to empower the women.

“Often times, we discover that malnutrition among women and children is caused by poverty. If teach them things about good dieting practices and they don’t have money to buy those things, what you are doing is meaningless. We have to start looking at what our real problems are.

She criticised the undue emphasis on engaging consultants to drive most government programmes, saying huge amount spent on such contracts could be channeled towards providing succor to women and children in the society.

The minister said the era of wasteful spending of funds meant for empowerment of women is over, adding that the government is emphasizing on the judicious use of funds to help the poor out of poverty than to further enrich the wealthy individuals.

On how best to solve the problem of malnutrition the minister said:  “When we empower women and they start making money, they will no doubt be able to feed their children and families. There shouldn’t be any advocacy meetings with the empowerment component or training to lift women out of poverty.”

She said that the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs is presently adopting a new approach of empowering women with tools and food processing machines that they can use to become more productive.

“We are supplying them with processing machines for food stuffs like  gari, corn, rice, and we have a programme that the ministry is implementing where opened a portal known as, ‘Touch a live’. People are expected to key into it and contribute money to support empowerment programmes in various localities of their choice. We are encouraging people to provide money to buy machines for the women to be able to produce things that are cheap and affordable,” the minister said.

The Chairperson Board of Trustees (BoT) of CS-SUNN, Dr. Mbang Kooffreh-Ada, described the occasion as a landmark event meant launch the new guidelines for the empowerment of women and young girls in the country.

“It is important that we don’t only talk about raising awareness about nutrition and empowerment of women but I think we should also consider doing things in a more structured and organised way. She said that guideline developed by CS-SUNN along with other stakeholders is aimed at addressing the confusion and lapses being witnessed in the implementation of women empowerment programmes in the country,” she stated.